What’s on your mind?
How’s your semester going?
Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?
Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?
What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?
Let us hear from you in the comments!
(Image by flickr user Stig Nygaard. Licensed through Creative Commons.)
35 Comments
I would like to see “advising” hacks.
Thanks. This blog is on my everyday reading list!
-tbf
I believe you’ll see such a post very soon.
For various reasons, mostly issues of time, I haven’t left any comments until now. I’d like to compliment you on the great job you have all done so far. It’s great to see the kind of initiative that’s exhibited on this site, and its important role in promoting skills and tools for digital humanities should be recognized as such. Way to go, Profhackers!
Thanks, Dave!
(Your check is in the mail…)
I’d love to see someone write a post about how sometimes simpler is better – that part of using technology effectively also involves knowing when not to use it.
(I’m feeling a bit provoked by the nth communication from my campus’ admins that comes in the form of an attachment instead of in-line text; I shouldn’t have to clutter up my drive and hunt for a compatible program just to read the monthly minutes, you know?)
Yes! I have a draft of a post on that sort of thing… and maybe other members of Team ProfHacker do, too.
(By the way, I used to get announcements in the form of attached PowerPower files. No, seriously.)
My personal favorite is when they put the text in the email, AND add a nice big bloated attachment with clip art that says the exact same thing. My department’s secretaries do this (especially with calls for papers), and one of my undergrad profs would hit us from all sides when sending an article: she’d include the link, cut and paste the article (with all its HTML and images) into the body of the message, and sometimes even put the article in a Word document and attach it.
First time commenter and reader of the blog here. I got a twitter link from asuonlineTLT who I follow to your 24-hour 1 day post and have been exploring he blog. I have to concur with Rana & Dave Lester above: great content on the site, and I too would love to see a post on the “simpler is better” aspect of tech. I’m struggling at my institution to try and integrate technology to meet the demands of students but often become stymied (I teach online) when students and I experience frustrations with the technology that somehow is supposed to help (in theory) facilitate learning and interaction. Blackboard’s course management system is one of these I have a love/hate relationship with. Would love to hear more perspectives and ideas about this issue. Great site, I look forward to reading more!
What Todd & Dave said. Loving this site, have found many useful things here in its short life.
I’d like to see something on how other office-less adjuncts cope. I have what I call my “portable office,” which is a file box that I slip into a rolling cart along with the textbooks, my lunchbox, and other supplies. I’m moving to keeping more student handouts on Blackboard rather than hauling them to class, and I’m starting to have students turn in more essays online as well. I eat lunch in the lobby of one of the buildings rather than in the adjunct workroom–it’s less stuffy and I sometimes get to have a friendly chat with a passing student. I don’t make my phone numbers available to students; it’s in-person or email only. When I have to meet one-on-one with a student, I use the writing center or the student union cafe. What do other adjuncts without offices do?
I’d be interested in that, too, Tria, since I’m in the same boat. It sounds like we’re approaching it in much the same way – I’m trying to do as much through the computer and online course system as possible (because of copy limitations) and right now each class has two folders – one for my stuff, one for assignments handed in as hard copies. I don’t give out phone numbers either, and I hold my office hours in the campus café.
Tria-
I am in the large computer lab in one of our buildings from 9am-11amish on MWF and told students if they need me to come find me there (which a handful have). It’s not perfect, but like you I am officeless so I have to improvise. Before my noon class, which is in a room right by the main entrance to the academic building where most of our classes are held, I hang out by the coffee cart from around 11:30-11:50ish and a lot of students from all of my classes will come by.
To rectify the problem of no phone #, I am thinking of creating a Google Voice #.
@William Patrick Wend: I use the google voice widget on my course Blackboard page for students to call: It has worked pretty well for me as some students are more comfortable with the phone. To be honest, Google Talk has solved the need to use the phone as my students prefer chatting and IM to voice calls, though a few do use the voice feature. But be sure to stipulate hours and manage the times they can call (set up specific hours that they can call including time zones, and give them an expected response time – for all course communications I tell students they can expect a response within 24-48 hours after emailing or leaving a message). Also be sure to set up which phones you want to have ring when students use the number. Otherwise they will call at 2 AM and your house phone may ring in the middle of the night, particularly if you teach online and have students from multiple time zones
That was an unpleasant lesson to learn that first semester teaching online 
Thanks for the sound advice. I am going to look into Google Voice more when I have a chance; I think, I agree with you, a lot of students are more comfortable with phone and IM so it is good to adhere to that.
I do “E-Office” hours where I tell them (9-11pm Wednesdays) I will be in our email for those two hours if they need me. Adding an IM/Voice to that would be fine by me.
I’m also curious to hear if any profs have tried banning emails from campus-based students. I think the filter for contact might be too low (I have 260 messages in my Entourage. It feels like I spend the day shoveling smoke.)
Also, how about some hacks on how to help your GA help you.
Thanks,
tbf
Todd, you are absolutely on my wavelength. Just yesterday I announced to my work mates that I HATE student email. It seems to be a persistent drone of questions prompted by students who didn’t read the directions.
And it’s unavoidable, since one of my classes is online and the others are hybrids. What’s to be done? Rewrite directions…write more…write less…write by committee…ask students to help. All these are hmmmm….mmmmmarginally helpful.
I’d love to see a great post about this!
Thanks!
Heidi
Heidi – something that might help is to set up some online forums for questions – that way you’re not having to answer the same question a bazillion times. I’m finding that having forums set up for comments and questions has really cut down on the number of unnecessary emails.
Templates or FAQs can also work help–that way, the e-mail is just a quick link, rather than something very involved.
…and if you are using GMail, the “canned response” feature comes in VERY handy…
Julie,
Thanks for that tip. I use Text Expander for macro answers. My favorite is: “I’m afraid I’m unable to help you with that. Please contact __________ with the Department of __________ Advising Center. Her contact information is located here: [Link]“
Text Expander works in any document and has been worth the $30. Mac only. http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/
-tbf
Todd Finley http://bit.ly/Hfs8N
I am looking for some guidance about granting extensions for papers. Our first paper in Comp I is due tomorrow and a few students have approached me about the chance of getting an extension. Suggestions?
What clause for extensions and/or late papers did you have in your syllabus already? What sorts of excuses did they offer?
I’ve used with some success (i.e. fewer minutes spent on negotiating individual cases…) Nels’ approach:
If you turn it in on time, I’ll grade it and give you comments. If you turn it in late up to 1 week, I’ll grade it with no penalty and no comments. However, I will not accept any papers after the 1-week-late mark.
I had forgotten about that one…I like it. I’m going to use it next semester instead of my “I’ll take it up to a week late but with a penalty, yet still give you comments” approach.
A potential problem (that I’ve run into with a few students): if a writer always turns in papers late, and if they’re always mediocre, then the lack of comments means that their chances of improvement are slim. I offer (again and again and again) to meet with students 1-on-1 to discuss their writing, but given how busy the average student is (and how unmotivated some students are) not as many students take me up on my offers as I’d like unless they’re required to do so.
So another possibility is to offer the up-to-1-week-late option for 1 paper, no questions asked. After that one option has been used up, however, all papers must be turned in on time. Period.
I would love to see a post sometime about what to do in class if the students (as a group) have not done the reading. Obviously it’s usually the case that in any group of students, some of them do all the reading all the time, some do all the reading some of the time (or some of the reading all of the time), some do some of the reading some of the time, and finally, some never read at all.
However, I’m talking about a day when everyone has collectively dropped the ball, and you have a choice of whether to let them go, which would seem to reward the behavior, or abandon your planned discussion and use the class time in some other way. It would be great to assemble some possibilities for what to do in this situation.
Clancy, this is when I break the class into groups of 3 or 4 students each and give each group a question or problem they must solve together by using the text they were supposed to have read. I had to do this with Othello recently when it seemed that just about everyone was too stymied by Elizabethan language and had quit reading before the end of the first scene. Each group was assigned a character and had to come up with a character description, the character’s main motivation and fear, and a list of major actions the character performs or is involved with during the assigned scenes, and the group had to report these back to the class. The groups were suddenly reading, discussing the play, and (gasp!) learning something. I circulated so that I could redirect the group discussions when needed. It worked very well!
Thanks. I’ve done that one before myself.
My request was prompted by a class I observed today; the teacher had assigned a reading that he’d uploaded as a PDF onto the course web site. It seemed as though the students not only hadn’t read it, they hadn’t printed it out or even gone to the web site to see whether or not they had any reading to do for that day. So I’m thinking along the lines of a complete epic fail. Say the students are sitting in class, but they haven’t done the reading, and they haven’t brought the book with them. What then? The teacher I observed today performed admirably; he projected the PDF onto the wall and called their attention to specific passages, but it was a bit of a struggle. I’d like to be able to give teachers in that situation (which most of us have been in! I certainly have!) a range of options for how to proceed.
Clancy, that is a tough one! The very mean teacher inside me says “Quiz time! That’ll teach ‘em!” The nicer teacher, however, is looking for a way to be sure that the students still learn something.
If there’s a nearby computer lab that you have access to at a moment’s notice (our campus has one in a neighboring building), perhaps you could take the students there to read the .pdf, along with an assignment to answer, in writing, particular questions about the reading.
Aside from that, and from the strategy you observed, I’m also wondering what might be done.
I like Tria’s idea. Another plan that I’ve used is as follows. Have a problem-based activity at the ready that requires students to identify and/or construct an answer in small groups. I can usually count on half the class to have at least brought the book. At the end of 30 minutes or so, students report on their answers.
Traci Gardner, my hero, has a list of the kinds of activities that could be employed in the scenario I’m describing: http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/016.shtml
-tbf
That does sound like a ghastly scenario!
Mostly I try to prevent such situations by instituting structural penalties for not preparing – a weekly quiz on the readings, for example, that’s really easy if you’ve read, not so easy if you haven’t. But I also try to anticipate when students are likely to drop the ball (say, on the day a paper is due) and plan lessons that can be done in class with little prior preparation. A guided discussion of part of the reading, combined with small group work on excerpts on it, can work well.
Sometimes though… a couple of times I insisted that the class be spent reading the material that had been ignored, and worked with the handful of students who had come to class prepared; once, even, I took that handful to the coffeeshop for class and treated them to drinks over discussion. (That was during one particularly aggravating semester in which slacking was rampant.)
There are challenges if you choose to divide up the class this way, but it avoids that “reward the slackers and punish the workers” effect that happens if the class is treated the same way.
Great ideas, Rana! I like that you’ve figured out a way to reward the prepared while making sure the slackers still have to do the work.
I’ve learned from the great amount of slack in my lit classes, and in my second-start classes I’ve been requiring students to complete and turn in “study guides” over every reading. These are basic questions that cover the main points of the reading, and students get a homework grade for turning these in. I know that this way they’ve at least given the readings a once-over.
There was some grumbling over these, which led me to offer the option of quizzes instead, and now most students happily complete the study guides and turn them in (except, of course, those determined to do nothing, hoping that they’ll miraculously squeak by). In any case, this has helped increase the number of students who actually do the readings.
Rana, I was just thinking about this on my commute home today; most of my 102 students work very hard but some of them are not doing the reading and do not participate in class (or pay attention). Next semester I want to add in weekly/daily/? quizzes for the stories/poems/plays we are reading to reward prereading.
Are there options for test creation software other than those offered by book publishers (e.g., TestGen or ExamView)? I like the utility of having software to manage test banks and create and format paper tests, but I don’t like being tied to a book publisher and having to change software when changing texts. Also, the test questions publishers provide range from mediocre to dreadful. I’d like to develop my own test banks, but I don’t want to be locked in to the software provided by a book publisher.
The post “websites all undergrads should know about” put this in my head. I’d like to see a page that has an index and brief description of all the uber-websites mentioned on Profhacker, such as Mint.com.
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